A week after one of his best performances as a Haas F1 Team driver in Austria, Romain Grosjean endured a much tougher Friday at Silverstone, with the Frenchman struggling with tyre temperatures, but he hopes they can solve the issues overnight.
Grosjean finished sixth last week at the Red Bull Ring, but ended both Free Practice sessions on Friday down in fourteenth, and he admits they are not as fast as they were at his point of the weekend seven days ago.
“It’s been a working day. We’re not as fast as we were in Austria at this time of the weekend,” said Grosjean. “We’re struggling a little bit with getting the tyres in the window, possibly with the cooler temperatures, but I don’t know for sure.
“We’ve also been evaluating low fuel and high fuel. I wouldn’t say I’m 100 per cent happy with the car, but we’ve got some idea of what to do for tomorrow.”
The team also made a brake supplier change during the interval between sessions, with Carbon Industrie brakes being used in the second session as they continue to work out whether to move away from Brembo after numerous issues with brakes in the past eighteen months, and Grosjean said it was a big job that was done before second practice.
“We changed brakes over lunch from Brembo to Carbon Industrie, which doesn’t make our life very easy,” said Grosjean. “There’s a lot of mapping and all that had to be done behind the scenes. That was a big job.